" Books, Dreams and Quarrels (1919-1928) "
Exhibition FROM SEPTEMBER 5 TO OCTOBER 12, 2024
Tuesday to Saturday, 1 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Entry without reservation
The exhibition “Surrealists at the NRF. Books, Dreams and Quarrels”, on offer from September 5 to October 12, 2024, is part of the centenary of the publication of the Manifeste du surréalisme by André Breton and as part of the Paris Surrealist tour, organized by the Professional Committee of Art Galleries and the Centre Pompidou around the exhibition “Surréalisme ” at the Centre Pompidou from September 4, 2024 to January 13, 2025.
Designed by the historical department of Éditions Gallimard, it will present unpublished archives from the publishing house, as well as a selection of rare books and documents (manuscripts, drawings), from private and public collections, relating to the works of Breton, Aragon, Crevel, Reverdy, Eluard, Desnos, Char... and the reactions they provoked.
- Letter from André Breton to Gaston Gallimard January 23, 1928 © Gallimard Archives
- Surrealist reviews © Private collection.
"André Gide is with us!" The young André Breton was proud to announce it in the spring of 1919 to Tristan Tzara, a Dada master, at the very moment when the journal Littérature was being launched, which would become the official support of the surrealist movement in France. This happy sponsorship, supported by that of Paul Valéry, made La Nouvelle Revue française, already a high place of literary recognition and creation in France, a point of attachment for this new generation of writers emerging from the war and involved in one of the most radical paths that belles-lettres had taken until then.
Available to the avant-garde, and especially attached to understanding its modern genealogy (Rimbaud, Mallarmé, Apollinaire, Max Jacob, etc.), the NRF will seek to integrate Dada into a critical history of literature – without any complacency – while working to attract the young Dadas, and soon surrealists, that are Breton and Aragon in its columns; then, with the enthusiastic support of Gaston Gallimard, in the catalogue of Éditions de la NRF – which will give rise to the publication during the interwar period of several masterpieces (Nadja, L'Amour fou, Le Paysan de Paris, Capitale de la douleur, etc.).
This manner of enthronement, which was played out from 1920, would make some elders grind their teeth; and although they found solid internal support with Jean Paulhan, the surrealists would not fail to dynamite this knighting from within, fearing more than anything the normalization of their seditious enterprise. Provocations and quarrels followed one another until the improbable publication, by Gallimard, of this Traité du style d'Aragon where the poet abandoned all restraint with regard to his elders. But it was on the political terrain, and not only aesthetic, that the fracture line would become deeper, even irreconcilable for some. Insults flew, people challenged each other to duels; the primacy given to dreams, poetry and love did not exclude social struggle, beyond words.
For the NRF, literature cannot put itself at the service of the Revolution, which the surrealists, rallying to the communist project, will claim to do, in accordance with their project to change life, to change the world. And in their own way, to be beyond literature without ever leaving it.
AROUND THE EXHIBITION
Publications :
André Breton, Manifestes du surréalisme . Preface by Philippe Forest, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade collection. Special edition bound in leather, 1,184 pages, 10.4 x 16.9 cm. Release date September 29, 2024 at the introductory price of €65.
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Paul Eluard, L'amour de la poésie, with works by Kiki Smith. Paperback 176 pages, 25 x 32.5 cm. Release date September 26, 2024 at a price of €45.
There is also a limited edition of 99 copies on 83 gr. Hosho Japanese paper, in a slipcase, accompanied by a numbered lithograph signed by the artist Kiki Smith. 24 x 31.5 cm. €750
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Max Jacob, Christian Lacroix, Claude Valence, Miroir d'astrologie. 304 pages, under illustrated cover, hardback 18.5 x 23.5 cm. Release date September 26, 2024 at a price of €39.
A limited edition of 99 copies, in a slipcase, accompanied by a numbered lithograph signed by the artist Christian Lacroix is also in preparation.
